Some voices have expressed frustration that the Democratic field to take on Republican Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois' Democratic-leaning 10th District is fractured between rematch-seeker Dan Seals and attorney and former Clinton aide Jay Footlik. To the extent that Seals and Footlik both been outraised by a tidy sum in the second quarter, money-splitting is certainly a concern, but not an overwhelming one. After all, fundraising is never a zero-sum game.
Is there a chance that a primary could be a good thing? If Dan Seals is the nominee (and he has a strong chance, given the goodwill and name recognition that his longshot-turned-competitive 2006 campaign generated), he could emerge an even stronger candidate in the general.
How do I figure? In 2006, Seals ran a very competent campaign, hitting Kirk hard on his ties to Bush and the Republican Congress. The one area of improvement for Seals lies in his Iraq message. It's not so much a question of substance (Seals has the correct stance: “responsible withdrawal”), but volume. This Chicago-area district is an expensive media market for any congressional candidate to run in, and Seals therefore had to condense many different themes into the few television spots he did run (see here and here). As we have argued before, 2008 rematch-seekers should be prepared to reorient their campaign message with a strong stance on Iraq redeployment as the central theme, especially if they spent much of the 2006 campaign hitting on peripherals like prescription drugs, the cost of gasoline, congressional pay raises, et cetera. Granted, I'm not saying that campaigning on these issues should be eliminated–far from it. It's just that these should be side dishes to the main course of Iraq.
And I think Dan Seals gets it, especially when I read pieces like this one from Roll Call:
Seals Seeks 'Anti-War' Label in 10th District
Dan Seals recently staked his claim to the “anti-war” label now that he faces a credible challenge for the Democratic nod in the Prairie State's 10th district.
Seals, whose long-shot bid to unseat Rep. Mark Kirk (R) almost was successful last year, technically bashed Kirk for his vote against immediately redeploying troops from Iraq earlier this month. But clearly his shot was intended to also strike Jay Footlik (D), the business consultant who only recently decamped Washington, D.C., to compete with Seals.
“I am the only candidate who has opposed the war from the start and the only one who unequivocally supports a responsible timeline for withdraw,” Seals boasted in a news release.
If Footlik's challenge is inspiring Seals to stake his territory on the left side of the Iraq debate, this primary could actually be doing a favor for Seals in the general election–should he make it that far.
I agree a primary between Jay Footlik and Dan Seals in Illinois 10 will strengthen the winner in what will be a difficult battle against the left turning well funded Mark Kirk, but Seals cannot claim, like Barack Obama, that he was against the war from the beginning.
Obama made a brave speech against the grain early in his Senate primary campaign saying, “I’m not against all wars, I’m against stupid wars and this is a stupid war.” When Seals entered public life in late 2005, he was already for responsible withdrawal, just like Footlik.
I look forward to the primary between Footlik and Seals. Should Footlik emerge the winner, his foreign policy expertise will neutralize Kirk on the issue and force a debate on domestic policy Democrats usually win those contests. Besides, challengers rarely win a rematch.
First of all, what makes a primary useful is increasing name recognition for the eventual winner — Seals had a primary challenge last time which did the trick — the people in IL-10 know him well enough. Seals is going to win the nomination — he is very very popular among IL-10 Dems (Note– it is the district where I grew up and still have family there). So the only thing this will do is drain his warchest.
Second… Dan has become excellent on the stump.. he doesn’t have Obama’s record as he hasn’t held public office before. It isn’t fair to compare. If Seals had a better campaign operation and had gotten support from the DCCC, he could have won. He definitely deserves a chance with DCCC backing. Footlick does not offer anything new, and it is a mistake to have a primary that is solely about the Iraq war as that is a debate that will in the end not help the eventual winner in a moderate district.
Instead of buying spots on Chicago broadcast TV next time around, the Kirk campaign should pour all the funds into cable. He’d get 5 or 10 times the exposure for the same amount of money.
I read a claim that Kirk felt he had to have ads on broadcast so that big donors in the Chicago area would take him seriously. I hope we are past that point by now. He does not need to waste money buying over the air to cover half the population of Illinois when he can target his ads to his district via cable.
A recent Chicago Tribune article reported that the DCCC was pleased with both Jay Footlik and Dan Seals and was taking no position in the primary. Hopefully, the DCCC will back the primary winner if it believes that person has the ability to beat Mark Kirk. There is no guarantee that it will help Seals this time if he is the nominee.
The DCCC will back a winner and Footlik is that winner. Since 1998, there have been only six successful Congressional rematches out of more than 100. Those are not the odds the DCCC will back with its resources. The DCCC knows these things and is waiting for Jay to win the primary before getting involved.